go the distance
by l0ngl0st
Summary: Somewhere, Clarke closes her eyes, allows herself to imagine a softer world, and smiles. / character-explorations, one-shot, hints of Bellamy&Clarke.


_so I bare my skin  
and I count my sins  
and I close my eyes  
and I take it in  
_~_Bleeding Out_, Imagine Dragons

* * *

Clarke wishes on the stars.

It seems silly, some remnant of a girl she doesn't remember how to be. She never thought about it while on the Ark—instead, she'd occupied herself with staring down at Earth from the port window, imagining wind tousling her hair and the sound of waves crashing against the shore. And then they hit the ground and she was suddenly fascinated by the sky, the vast expanse that stretched between her and her former home. Maybe that's how all people are: spinning head over heels through space, always wondering and reaching for things larger than themselves, some far away place to deposit their faith and their dreams. It's easier, imagining an ideal. She believed in the ground until she actually met the sharp tang of it, the dirt and the blood and the shimmering wreckage. And whatever's out there beyond the empty hole where the Ark used to float probably isn't perfect, either, but there's comfort in staring at the cold twinkle of the stars, comfort in telling herself that the galaxy spins on, despite what she has done here. Despite everything.

In the end, maybe distance is all it takes to deify something.

So Clarke walks. She leaves Camp Jaha and her mother and the weight of a thousand words behind, but no trail. She leaves Raven and her steel spine, Octavia with her knife-sharp tongue, Monty and his voice like an apology and Jasper with his broken eyes. She leaves Bellamy.

But leaving does not mean forgetting, and she almost laughs when she pulls out a sketchbook while rummaging through her pack. Briefly, she considers tossing it in the river, but sentimentality stays her hand. Carefully, she opens it to a clean page, and that night, by the fire, she takes a charred piece of wood and sketches the glade surrounding her.

(Nothing else. No people. Not yet.)

She doesn't have a set destination in mind. Clarke is tired of making plans, of measuring and quantifying and rationalizing (_a life for a life, a mountain for her mother, a people for a people_), so she lets her heart and her feet take over. Eventually, the trees start to look familiar; Clarke stumbles over a root just as she spots the sharpened stakes, the gate swinging from its hinges.

She laughs, then. She falls to her knees and laughs and eventually those laughs turn into choked sobs and the stars come out and watch, the moonlight dancing over the ramparts, and Clarke wonders if years from now, a family of mutated deer will make this battleground their playground. She hopes so. She hopes a storm will tear this place apart, this birthplace of bloodshed, this painful reminder of a people who tried to put down roots and only succeeded in choking those already planted around them instead. Clarke wonders if growth always comes at a cost.

But because a storm is brewing and she has nowhere else to go, she stays in the dropship that night.

And she sketches.

Her mother, first—the lines at the corner of her mouth, the determined, downturned set of her lips, the braided hair. The guarded eyes that still reach for her, through the page. The others, next: Miller and Monty and Jasper and Harper, Raven and Octavia, Finn on the first day on the ground, lit up like a promise, Lexa and a silent army and shadows across her eyes, Bellamy in the middle of some impassioned speech, the muscles in his jaw drawn taut, his eyes burning with something stronger than simple belief. She spends a little extra time trying to get in his freckles, thinks constellations and stars and wishes that she made too late.

In the morning, Clarke sets them on fire and scatters their ashes around the campsite. Bids a final goodbye.

o.O.o

Bellamy gets good at building.

It doesn't matter what it is—repairs, shelter, morale. People move differently around him, now. Well, not the kids, who knew from the start, but the adults. Kane starts giving him more responsibilities, lets him lead hunting parties into the forest for food. Meanwhile, Abby gives him plant descriptions, but every time Bellamy leaves, he can't help thinking of the one thing Abby truly wants him to bring back.

Other days, he's on the training grounds, teaching people how to use guns. It's for hunting, presumably, but he catches the way his trainees shift, their eyes darting toward the gates as they mull over the silence outside the walls. Every morning, the sun paints the sky blood red, and Bellamy wonders how long it will take until he looks at the horizon simply to take it in and not while scanning for threats.

At least, that's what most people think he's doing when he stares off into the distance, and Bellamy doesn't have the heart to correct them. He just clears his throat, mutters things like "widen your stance" and "don't hold it too close to your face," tries not to think of the way Clarke hunched her shoulders the first time she picked up a gun, the way she was trying to bear the weight of the world even then.

Raven doesn't call him out when his eyes drift over her head briefly to stare at the opened gates. She just keeps plowing along with her explanation of how the radio tower works, pausing every now and then to let Wick add his own remarks. Octavia doesn't comment on the awkward pause after Bellamy says, _No, O, you can't do that_, doesn't say anything about the way he waits a moment too long for a second voice to back him up.

And Abby doesn't ask when she finds him outside one night, staring hard at the north star, thinking about signal flares and three hundred lives and _I wouldn't know what to wish for._

"Long day tomorrow," Abby says instead, giving him one long look before heading back inside.

"Aren't they all," replies Bellamy, and thinks—_I know what to wish for, now._

_Be safe, wherever you are._

o.O.o

Somewhere, Clarke closes her eyes, allows herself to imagine a softer world, and smiles.


End file.
